Like Deleted Scenes Out Of Idiocracy

      When DOGE was running roughshod over the government over a year ago, we knew how reckless and cruel it was with the blessings of a spineless and supine Congress and the support of law enforcement, and that that was the very point. People, including me, got kicked off Social Security and veterans were locked out of health care through the VA. The horror stories have since been ossified into history. But the stories of just how callous and sadistic this self-destructive government was in those days are still coming out.

      A book was published yesterday entitled, Into the Wood Chipper: A Whistleblower's Account of How the Trump Administration Shredded USAID. by Nicholas Enrich. Enrich was USAID's acting assistant administrator for global health. And in February last year, he and some of his staff attended a meeting with some Trump political appointees that one is hard-pressed to believe actually happened. Indeed, some of the quotes of these flaks sound as they came from Idiocracy if it was written by the Marquis de Sade. Mike Judge, apparently, wasn't cynical enough.

     Enrich has shared a lengthy excerpt of his book with the media outlet, The Handbasket. Enrich resisted the cuts demanded by these cold-blooded sociopaths sent to the Ronald Reagan building and eventually he was placed on administrative leave when he became a whistleblower. It's hard to encompass all the lunacy that took place during this meeting.

     As one can expect, the assclowns who confronted the USAID officials and demanded deep cuts to the agency's budget had no experience in global health. As one can also expect, they were stuffed into these positions and had the axes placed in their hands not because of any training, experience or expertise but their loyalty to the sociopath recently shoehorned back into the Oval Office.

     One political appointee actually thought that USAID did nothing but perform abortions. “As a Republican, when I think of what USAID does in global health, I assumed it was just, you know, abortions,” said Joel Borkwrt, USAID's new Chief of Staff. After Enrich's presentation of USAID's functions, one person, Ken Jackson, chuckled and said, "“Wow, there really is so much that USAID does that we never knew. This is the story that needs to get out there.” Of course, the story of USAID's mission-critical functions have been "out there" since it was created in 1961. They reemerged when Trump announced he wanted to end the agency, the premier global health organization in the world.

     Borkert wanted Enrich to identify "life-saving" functions. When he answered that one of them was saving women's lives after childbirth, such as halting post-partum hemorrhaging and preeclampsia, Borkert, like a typical Republican male sociopath (pardon the tautology), dismissed that as a "number two" problem.

     Apparently, saving women's lives abroad wasn't "mission critical" enough for Borkert.

     When Enrich realized they were asking USAID to "dig their own graves", he tried to impress upon them the vital mission was preventing the spread of diseases such as TB. That's when some idiot named Adam Korzeniewski, the White House Liaison, suggested putting together a "Barney-style" slideshow basically dumbing down the agency's initiatives. Then he said, “If you can make one of those maps like they have in Outbreak, where it shows the red growing over time as the disease spreads? You know, like the zombie apocalypse? That would be great, very effective."

     These are the people that are killing our government day by day. They look at global health initiatives and programs through the lens of partisan politics, video games, children's slideshows and Dustin Hoffman science fiction movies. 

     These morons that were sent to the Reagan building had no clue what USAID did and didn't place any emphasis in halting the spread of infectious diseases such as tuberculosis and Ebola. (Do a Wikipedia search on Ebola and see what an incredibly horrible way it is to die)

     Considering this meeting was held barely five years after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, apparently these idiots forgot how swiftly an airborne, highly contagious disease can travel from the other side of the world. Originating in China and with the help of global air travel, COVID-19 came to America in weeks and killed 400,000 Americans in the first year, finally reaching over a million and a quarter deaths in the US alone. So, USAID wasn't just tasked with saving lives abroad- They were helping to save American lives, too. Just imagine a pandemic on a scale of COVID-19 reaching our shores, only with COVID-19 being replaced with Ebola.

     But obviously, stopping the spread of such deadly diseases wasn't a priority for an administration that had essentially ignored the coronavirus pandemic until it was forced to and still didn't do many things right.

     One thing not mentioned by Enrich was the other value of USAID. The Kennedy administration brought it into being in 1961 as a means of exerting soft power in Third World countries so they wouldn't fall under the influence of China and the old Soviet Union. With USAID's funding and abilities to feed the hungry and heal the sick suddenly terminated, that left the door wide open for these authoritarian regimes to impose their ideology on those vulnerable nations. However cynical its creation, USAID worked for six and a half decades and had saved countless tens of millions of lives until the Manchurian Candidate went back to the White House.